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COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



POEMS 



The POEMS of 

PAUL MARIETT 



II 




NEW YORK 

MITCHELL KENNERLEY 

MCMXIII 



COPYRIGHT 191 3 BY MITCHELL KENNERLEY 






PRESS OF J. J. LITTLE & IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK 



©CI.A346650 



For the privilege of reprinting the 
poem in this volume entitled " The 
Grateful Dead " thanks are due to 
the editor of The Atlantic Monthly. 



Paul Mariett 
October 2^, 1888 — March 14, igi2 

TN the Spring of 19 10, six of us, with one ex- 
ception undergraduates in Harvard Col- 
lege, used to eat dinner together about as often 
as we could induce an unwilling secretary to 
send out postcards and collect the group. We 
had begun with no small amount of self-con- 
sciousness by regarding each other as types; a 
claim to membership was as poet, dramatist, 
musician, scientist, romantic, reformer. After 
dinner we would gather about a fire and start a 
discussion. Inevitably the topic of the evening 
seemed to involve all human interests, so that 
arguments about religion would end in a quar- 
rel over Chesterton's sanity and considerable 
heartsearching as to whether soap and social- 
ism were really middle-class fads. Those eve- 
nings are memorable in many ways, but chiefly 
for what they gave us of Paul Mariett. 

Not long after, the cancer of which he died 
took hold of him. That Spring he overflowed 

1 



11 Paul Mariett 



with life: feeling his own power, he was full 
of plans, and the grim silence which he had 
formerly maintained began to break into color- 
ful confidence. His appetite, for everything, 
was enormous. Almost for the first time we 
began to see that the real Paul was a fellow of 
turbulent interests and subtle perceptions, who 
had carefully protected himself by a brusque 
and unsociable manner. Beneath the austerity 
was a brilliant, livid, and audacious love of liv- 
ing. He was shy about his delicacies and bash- 
ful about his virtues; his vices he loved to 
parade. Paul rather enjoyed the reputation of 
being something of a man-eater. Of all things 
he did not want, the prettifying touch is, I be- 
lieve, the one he despised most. He himself 
was brutally direct; he liked others to be so, 
too. For all the conventional attitudinizing of 
the poet over sweetness and light he had a 
bitter scorn; he could hate with zest; he be- 
lieved that hate was a good robust virtue. To 
all kinds of softness Paul was a hard bed in- 
deed, and to muffled personalities and finicky 
souls he was a cleansing gale. 

You had to brace your feet to meet him — 
there was no chance to shirk behind a graceful 
pose, or a cultivated one, or any other kind of 



Paul Mariett ui 



barrier between yourself and him. That was 
his genius : people became closer knit and more 
self-contained when he was around. You could 
not coddle your difficulties in him, for he made 
you ashamed of your slackness. 

Paul enjoyed life. He had, it seemed, no 
listless pleasures. When he ate it was with 
tremendous relish; a book was something to be 
attacked and beaten till he had subordinated it; 
swimming and snowshoeing he loved partly for 
the strain and rack of them. He had us all 
intimidated by his interest in boxing. Lan- 
guages Paul seemed to learn with no trouble at 
all. For a time he carried a Portuguese trans- 
lation of the Gospels in his pocket in order to 
teach himself Portuguese. The classics he 
knew, — they were a natural background to a 
really vast culture which he absorbed silently. 
With his music, and his languages and litera- 
tures, he was a pecuharly learned undergrad- 
uate. Yet he hated pedantry so vigorously, and 
showed so terse and unacademic a manner, that 
not even his closest friends were entirely aware 
of the very solid foundations of Paul's literary 
interests. 

This learning did not dull his appetite for 
existence, and that is what distinguishes him 



IV Paul Mariett 



from most undergraduate poets. They like life 
nicely selected, and their passions are carefully 
strained through a literary tradition. No doubt 
they often sing melodiously and show surpris- 
ing competence in verse. But their passions are 
Swinburne's or Shelley's; somebody else has 
sweated for them. Paul Mariett was too gen- 
uine a lover of life to accept some one else's 
version of it. He struggled violently, some- 
times aimlessly, against the ordinary technique 
of passion, like a man caught in a snarl of rope. 
Now and again he would half free himself : I 
think some of the poems in this volume prove 
that. But the struggle was only at its begin- 
ning when he was felled by the disease which 
finally killed him. It is our faith that with time 
he would have won. 

The tragic feeling which runs through so 
much of his work is, I am sure, not entirely 
ordinary undergraduate pessimism. It is a gen- 
uinely tragic feeling, a gift of nature's rather 
than a handicap. Nietzsche speaks of the pes- 
simism of strength and describes it as ''an in- 
tellectual predilection for what is hard, awful, 
evil, problematical in existence, owing to well- 
being, to exuberant health, to fullness of exist- 
ence." In Paul Mariett, the tragic is always 



Paul Mariett 



active, sharp and colored; it was not so much a 
regret over life as an insight into it. 

This little volume is a loose scattering from 
his verse. He wrote much prose and some 
plays besides. Two of his stories were pub- 
lished in The Atlantic Monthly ; other stories 
and some essays were printed in various under- 
graduate magazines at Harvard. A play of 
his was performed by the Harvard Dramatic 
Club. All of the man is not in this work, — the 
expression he' was seeking does not come easily, 
and no one knew better than he that he had 
achieved it only now and then. 

His illness lasted two years. After a while 
no opiate dulled the agony he suffered night and 
day. It was an inexplicable affliction, — one of 
those terrors in existence for which philosophies 
and religions have not yet accounted. Paul 
Mariett had only his sheer human valor to op- 
pose to it. He stood his fate; racked in body, 
his soul was never sick. 



Walter Lippmann 



POEMS 



THE MASTER WOULD IMPROVISE 

T SAT at my instrument and began to build. 

I built me a palace : 
I built me an edifice of molten notes. 
I took the keys and cunningly interwove 
My fingers in a gleam of black and white : 
The sound rose like a mist between my hands 
Flashing, 
Halting, 
Hovering, 
Pouncing, — 
And forth, 
Lo! 

My palace. 

And first I laid a firm foundation, 
A solemn, granite, ponderable bass. 
Deep, 
Very deep ; 

Notes, Notes, Notes. Each a weight upon 
the heart, 

I 



Poems 



(Such weights make firm foundations.) 

Then 

I fashioned the framework. 

Trembhng trellises 

Climbed to the highest wreaths of tinted 
clouds, 

Fragile, 

Dainty, 

Evanescent, spiring, flashing white and arch- 
ing, 

Curving to meet in delicate, tinkling sound. 

Like frozen aspirations 

Halted on a heavenward journey: 

A sound the wafered, silver ice on shallow 
pools 

Gives when it shivers to unheeded gems. 

And these were strewed with notes of blue. 

Sheathed, lapped, embraced with notes of 
blue. 

Yes; turquoise blue, and cuprous blue, and 
livid, living green. 

Shading and sliding indistinguishably 

To grey and muffling black 

At the foundation ; 

But, as they neared the summit. 

Growing translucent — like green amber. 

Then, at the top, 



Paul Mariett 



My fretted arches 

Would lean together, 

Would be wedded 

Beam unto beam, diligent to create a roof; 

Suddenly 

They began to redden. 

To turn rosy, 

(And all the while my fingers interlaced 

Swifter and yet more swift) 

Then to grow golden ; 

(My hands a ghostly mist) 

Pale, lambent fires 

Played about them, 

In, 

Out, 

Around, 

A dazzling dance; 

Soft tongues. 

Beautiful, 

Wonderful. 

Ah! . . . 

Ah! 

Ah! ! 

How shall my eyes endure to make the 



roof? 
Such light! 
Such light! 



Poems 

I sat at my instrument. 

My hands, lax, unstrung, 

Held to the crushing disillusionment — 

The black cacophony. . . . 

My head was bowed. 

I wept. 



Paul Mariett 



THE TEMPLE OF AZZI-REP 

' I ''HE gilded idol is broken now 

^ That faced to the east to see the sun; 
The temple rafters warp and bow 
At the weight of ages thrust thereon; 
And, ah! the sadness, 
The shadowing sadness, 
The strange, cold sadness for life undone ! 

Red lizards run on the battered step, 
Branches tangle the columns and shards; 
Broken the power of Azzi-Rep, 
Forgotten his worship, his name, his words — 
But, O ! the sadness. 
The strange cold sadness, 
The enveloping sadness that shrouds and 
guards ! 

One God persists for ever and aye. 

And small gods shrivel and fail in that Sun; 

But still, in the moonlight, the old gods lay 

Mystic spells on the heart and the tongue — 

And, ah! their sadness. 

Their potent sadness, 

A terrible sadness that never is done ! 



Poems 



TWO FEASTS 

^ I ^HE feast was at its height. The courtiers 
^ reeled 

In drunken waves along the pillared hall; 
The table bore the brunt of scattered foods, 
And garlands petal-pillaged by the rout, — 
Where, here and there, a woman crowned with 

wreaths 
Made rosy showers of her lover's favors, — 
And dishes overturned, and viands fouled, 
Half-cleft pomegranates gaping like a wound, 
And dusky grapes too lavish of their juice. 
And honeyed dates like ingots of fine gold. 
And curious breads, and dainty, broken 

sweets — 
All swept together in a riot of waste. 
Wherein the inebriate wallowed, sang, and 

kissed: 
Only the goblets held their contents firm. 
The walls and ceiHngs pulsed and spilled the 

sound; 
The pillars through the reek of perfumed haze 
Made oscillations at each drunken crash. 
Only, above, beside a space of wall, 



Paul Mariett 



Quite smooth, save for some pictured, antique 

men, 
Walking in stilted way along a dado, 
There loomed a clumsy, carven, winged sphinx, 
His features, gross and bland, endued with 

calm: 
A beast himself, he contemplated beasts. 

Beneath, high seated on an ivory throne, 
Belshazzar sate, and, with his hundred queens. 
Drank deeply, brushing with a crisp black beard 
A greedy goblet which the eunuchs filled. 

There rose a courtier in the lower hall; 
And standing on the flower-strewn tessellations. 
He cried aloud, addressing the great king: 

''O King! O Conqueror! O Mighty Lord! 
O Lord of adamantine Babylon, 
Of Babylon which lives for aye and aye, 
Of Babylon the indestructible — 
Bring us the golden vessels of the god, 
The god that dwelt in Israel, but now. 
Supine beneath the feet of iron Baal, 
Lies vanquished, and whom the gracious Queen, 
Our Lady Ashtaroth, has put to scorn — 
Bring us the golden vessels of that god. 
That we may give them to our cup-bearers. 
That we may drink and curse and shame his 
vaunt. 



8 Poems 



Bring us the golden vessels ! . . . " 

Nothing loth, 
The bearded king, with vinous-spattered mouth 
Gave forth an order. Came a gleam of gold. 
In flash and speck and point of golden fire. 
In sparkle, fleck, and glance, and coruscation, 
In shimmer, sheen, and diamond crenelation, 
In fettered dance of glowing, golden fire, 
As eunuchs raised the sacred vessels high 
Aloft, and set them down before the king; 
And seven lordlings took the seven cups. 
And agile servants bore the brimming bowls, 
And filled. 

Belshazzar staggered to his feet, 
A thousand thundered as he raised his cup — 
And silence rang adown the quivering 
hall. • . . 
For, yonder, near the sphinx, upon the wall, 
(Quite smooth it was, save for the antique men 
That walked in stilted way along the dado) 
Appeared the substance of a clenched hand. 
Clear-glowing with a fierce, supernal light, 
Which stretched a steady finger to the wall. 
And traced a single line of lettering. 
Thus : Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin, 
And ceased, and vanished like the levin-flash. 
Leaving the letters burning on the wall 



Paul Mariett 



In faintly-quivering, frozen lines of fire. 

Belshazzar wavered back against his throne, 
And stared aghast. His nerveless hands un- 
closed. 
The cup clashed down upon the marble floor, 
The silvery echo sped, and, in the coigns. 
Died lingeringly and faltered out an end: 
A perfect silence brooded o'er the room. 
Without, beneath the shadowy aisles of 
night, 
A trumpet blared defiant, hard, and high! 
Another and another, till the air 
Was vibrant with the timbre of their blasts ! 
And savage yells rang horrid in the streets. 
And bloody cries, and sharp despairing 
shrieks. . . . 
The barbarous Mede had battered in the 
gates ! 



II 



Without, the air was grey with sodden snow, 
The asphalt streets were slimy, wet, and black, 
Grotesque with goblin mirrorings of light. 
Of lamp and shop and whirring motor car, 
And roaring trains in beaded lines of light. 
And club and theatre, hotel and house, 



lO Poems 



All bright and radiant, instinct with light — 
The light which marks the City's nightly fete. 
A great hotel gave out from porch and front, 
And twenty towering rows of layered windows, 
Unstinted floods of yellow radiance. 
Within, the genial feast was at its height. 
A wide-walled, ample, crimson dining-hall, 
Ornate and ponderous with gilt and jade, 
And carpet treacherous with crimson plush, 
And marble, perfect as the purple snow. 
And softly bright with rosy-shaded light. 
Was clamorous with noisy revelry — 
Voices that laughed out ringingly and clear; 
The soft and murmurous sound of whispering; 
The hard metallic clatter of the plates; 
The cluck and gurgle of the flowing wine. 
The tables bore the brunt of scattered foods 
And flowers petal-pillaged by the rout; 
Black-coated men, bright-eyed and flushed of 

face. 
Smiled vacantly at women crowned with jewels; 
And ever, through the throng and maze of 

feasters, 
The stealthy waiters wound their silent way. 
The walls and ceilings pulsed and spilled the 

sound; 
The pillars thro' the reek of odorous haze 



Paid Marie tt II 



Made oscillations at each drunken shout. 
Only, above, upon a marble base, 
Was poised a dainty, fragile, winged Love, 
His features modelled to a frozen mirth: 
A beast himself, he fraternized with beasts. 

Beneath the statue, at the table's head 
Upon a massy seat of antique oak, 
A bearded man sat, gazing at the throng. 
Complacent, haughty, calm, and satisfied. 
His clumsy shoulders square against his chair, 
His thick-set fingers spread about a glass; 
From this he sipped from time to time, or spoke 
A word to women at his either hand. 

Below^ there rose a slim and handsome 
youth. 
And stood beside his chair, and swayed and 

smiled, 
And looked up at the bearded man and spoke : 

*'And truly, Sir, a charming gathering, 
A pleasant company, a pleasant feast, 
And all to do you honor. Sir, to-night 
We celebrate the final master-stroke 
That makes you emperor of a thousand roads, 
That gives into your hands, for your control, 
The tangled meshes of innumerous rails. 
That bind the cities of this continent 
Each unto each and help the cause of God — 



12 Poems 

Which is to bind man unto man in love." 

(At that a titter ran adown the hall, 

And even the calm bearded man half-smiled.) 

*^Now, Sir, in token of our amity, 
In praise of your executive control, 
We give to you this golden loving-cup," 
(Here waiters brought to him a golden cup) 
^*And we would drink your health." (The 

waiter took 
The golden cup and gave it to the man. 
Who smiled and nodded at receiving it.) 
'Till to the brim! Stand up!" 

The great hall rocked 
With leaping figures flashing to their feet. 
And blurred with darting arms that filled and 

raised 
The glasses gleaming like a thousand dia- 
monds — 
And shoutings thundered like the roaring seas I 
The bearded man swayed up and gained his 
feet, 
And grasped the cup and raised it like a gavel — 
And silence rang adown the quivering 
hall. . . . 
He parted lips to shape a pleasant word; 
But no words came. 

A strange discordant note 



Paul Marie tt 13 



Jarred horrid in the silence of the feast, 
Without the heavy windows of the room, 
Where the grey street was sodden under snow, 
A broken sound of distant song was heard, 
A sound of tired voices and a drum 
Beating a weary march along the street, 
A faint and mocking travesty of song, 
A stumbling chant and a bedraggled hymn. 
It swelled and grew as the long train drew 
near. 
And passed beneath the windows of the room. 
And ceased — both drum, and cracked, dis- 
cordant song; 
And in that breathless stillness someone cried: 
*'Bread! Give us bread!'' And then again, 
"Work! Bread!" 

Immediately the horrid hymn resumed. 
The drum took up the ragged marching 

step; 
The noise passed on adown the slimy street. 
The noise grew faint adown the sodden street. 
Grew faint — grew faint — and faltered out an 
end. 

The bearded man turned white and 
staggered back. 
Swayed by his chair, then suddenly sat down, 
Dropped the gold cup upon the table cloth, 



14 Poems 



Looked here, looked there, with nervous, shift- 
ing eyes. 
Smiled foolishly, and took again the cup, 
And drank the golden contents at a draught — 
And bade the feast proceed. 

The merriment 
Began anew; but mirthless merriment 
It proved. And till the finish of the feast, 
The guests ate, drank, and jested with no ease. 
No voices laughed out ringingly and clear; 
No soft and murmurous sound of whispering; 
No cheerful clattering of plate and glass; 
Only the memory of a distant song, 
A song of tired voices, and a drum 
Beating a weary march along the street, 
A faint and mocking travesty of song, 
A stumbling chant and a bedraggled hymn. 

So they broke up at length and went their 
ways. 

That night the order of all things was 
changed. 



Paul Marie tt 15 



THE HOUSE OF ERIC 

^ I ^HE wine and fire of life have entered my 

^ blood; I am lord of Alida. 

I have won her and led her home to my hall, 

shy-glancing and startled. 
Such a wife, such a woman ! No man but had 

hoped to obtain her! 
The wine and fire of life have entered my 

blood; I am lord of AHda. 

The wine and fire of life have entered my 

blood; I am sire of a man-child. 
Strong and lusty is he, golden-locked with the 

eyes of his father; 
In the court they are forging the blade he shall 

bear in the brunt of the battle. 
The wine and fire of life have entered my 

blood; I am sire of a man-child. 

The Ice and cold of death have entered my 
blood; I am reft of my man-child. 

He has gone to the country of gloom and of 
sorrow and sighing; 



1 6 Poems 



Break the blade which was forged for his hand 
to direct in the brunt of the battle! 

The ice and cold of death have entered my 
blood; I am reft of my man-child. 

The ice and cold of death have entered my 

blood; I am reft of Alida. 
Such a wife, such a woman! My grief has no 

words to recall her! 
I have put her below, with the child, in the 

embrace of the earth like iron. 
The ice and cold of death have entered my 

blood; I am reft of Ahda. 



Paul Marie tt 17 



SEA SONNETS 

North 

^TT^HERE, where the massy sea outweighs the 

^ main — 

Blank Ice; tossed hillocks rounded under snow; 
Grey, grasping, twisted cliffs, an endless row, 
Their feet In frozen Inlets; on a lane 
Of straying open water, all lurdane 
With Iron ripples, black and very slow, 
Which, In the night, the restless northern glow 
Paints Intermittent with ensanguined stain — 

There, days on days, the wind is visible. 
When, like a figure In a great, grey dream, 
The heavy air with snow Is ponderable; 
Or, If It cease, a small and bitter moon 
Glows, tangling In the tinkling Ice her gleam, 
Where icy waves crunch a metallic tune. 

South 

^TT^HE fragile seas that cherish In their waves 
^ The silvery volclngs of a sunnier time; 
The pearly grots of spiral coral caves, 
The topaz-freighted, iridescent rime; 



1 8 Poems 



The grass, which underneath the lucent floor, 
Forgets the world to sway its livid arms; 
The lapping ripples talking to the shore : — 
The southern ocean and her sensuous charms ! 

Upon the silver strand the tiny shells 
Are golden coins from some wrecked galleon; 
Behind, a scimitar of sand-dunes swells; 
Beyond, the gulls are fishing, in the sun. 
Flat, azure pools that stare against the sky, 
Or wink whene'er a faint breeze loiters by. 

The Coasters 

HE perfect curve of a bellying sail; 

The swish of white water under the 
rail; 
The sibilant song of the sharp salt wind; 
Blue skies above; blue seas behind, 
And off are we in our graceful craft 
From the harbor mouth. The httle waves 

laugh 
And croon at the churning bow. 
As we charge the changing flow 
Of the tides that come and go, 
With staunch, unyielding prow. 
We skirt the coasts where the headlands rise; 



T 



Paul Marie tt 19 



We slip through the teeth of the jagged reef; 
The north wind blows in our eyes. 
We skim the coast by the beach that lies 
White and gleaming in noonday heat, 
With breakers thundering at its feet, 
And a faint white line of frothy foam 
Half up its breadth — but on we roam. 

The fair wind falls at the close of the day. 
Out anchor ! we'll ride this night in the bay. 
The darkness steals up and we fade 
In the gloom, a ghostly shade. 
Like a nun in black arrayed 
Comes night. 

We are rocking here in the earliest morn, 

In the solemn hush ere the day is born. 

When the water, grey and chill, 

OiHly swells and slips. 

And rolls the helpless ships. 

As they nod at their anchor ropes. 

Behind, the precipitous slopes 

Of the barely discernible hill. 

Half-lit are grey and still. 

Up leaps the sun, the jovial sun! 
Away with sleep, the day's begun ! 



20 Poems 



Up creaks the sail; good! a freshening 

breeze! 
Push over the tiller; hold hard with your 

knees, 
For the wind begins to blow. 
Then away we ghde on the reddening tide 
To the sea's new ecstasies; 
The sea's new joys to know. 



Paul Marie tt 21 



AND A WIFE IN EVERY PORT 

CURFEIT of kisses, 

*^ Enough ! 

Leave me. I care not. Well, think of it 

later — 
When your ship's on the water and sailing — 

you loved me. 
I love you? O, foolish! 'Twere better to 

hate her. 
She who has hardly a heart of such stuff, 
Nor even misses. . . . 

Men I have known 

Before — 

Some of them loved me a little — 'twas pas- 
time; 

Some of them handsome, — well, none of 
them moved me. 

That isn't true, No! This is the last time. 

Go ere you hate me — the wind is off-shore — 

Leave me alone. . . • 



22 Poems 



CREW PRACTICE 
QNE! 

The long lean lance of the polished 
shell, 
Tempered, springy, lithe, alive. 

Two! 

The straight thin black wake behind, 

With its attendant maelstroms in regular order. 

Three! 

The rhythmic oars that sweep out, out. 
Catch, hold, sHde, come clear, dripping dia- 
monds. 

Four! 

The small clean wind that tickles on the bare 

neck. 
Lifts the curls, travels exquisitely down the 

spine. 

Five! 

The brown brawn of the moulded arm. 
Its infinite motions melting into one perfect 
movement. 



Paul Mariett 23 



Six! 

The coxswain, one great hollow megaphoned 

mouth, 
With tense, nervous, small straining hands. 

Seven! 

The whole body and soul ardently desiring 

speed; 
And the crawd, crawl, crawl of the monotonous 

dun banks. 

Eight! 

The utter uselessness of existing, driven thus, 
Insensate, machine-like — but the glory in the 
future ! 



24 Poems 



THE TRADE WIND 

T AM the monarch of sea-born winds. My 

^ throne is an empty place 

Built of the buoyant, billowing breeze in the 

loftiest bounds of space. 
I give the rein to my coursers fain to tread in 

the upper air; 
With plangent paces and tautened traces we 

ruffle the sea-plain bare. 
To waken, my task, the ships that bask and 

drift in the lazy sun. 
And set them free on the leaping sea till the 

waning months outrun: 

Till the waning months outrun, uncurbed, 

Till the hulks are hot for home. 

Till the hearts of the mariners leap dis- 
turbed — 
So they bound to the ropes and trim the sails. 
And the ship heels swiftly, the gunwale wails, 

And spits in flecks of foam! 
O Home ! 

And spits in flecks of foam ! 



Paul Marie tt 25 



My wanton winds have spilt the rain from the 

lips of the tilted clouds; 
Pulling and pushing the sluggish banks they 

charge in changing crowds. 
No spot or stain of cloud or rain shall sully my 

heavens clean, 
If the clouds will weep my winds will sweep 

and naught shall intervene, — 
And the sun shall beam and the waters dream 

and the sea birds cry in glee. 
For they know that I who shall never die will 

keep their eyrie free : 

Will keep their eyrie free and dry. 

Will keep their sunny sea, 

Will make the gloomy rain clouds fly — 
So they float on the lifting wave, or rise. 
And their bosoms white and their emerald 
eyes 

Are warm for the love of me 1 
O Sea! 

Are warm for the love of me I 



26 



oems 



SIRENS 

TVTILES of tumbled rocks about a bay, 

Black and red and rugged, grim-lipped 

and cold with caverns. 
Above the emerald of sloping downs against a 

sparkling sky. 
Rolling up against a cobalt sky. 

Between the ship and leeward shore the sea Is 

azure. 
Laughing sea and dancing sea and cavernous 

with color ! 
All the sky has tumbled in It to stain it with Its 

dye-stuff — 
Dimpled, restless, curling azure flecked with 

iridescent white-caps. 

Laughing wind and dancing water and beauti- 
ful the women, — 

Pearl against the dun rocks where the silver 
belt of beach 

Takes the breaker on its breast, decks Itself 
with rustling foam, — 

Bright of hair and bright of breast and wild of 
look and wild of gesture. 



Paul Marie tt 27 



Sweet mouths curled seductively for love. 

Yet deep eyes half-regretful, half forgetful, 
half-reviving. . . . 

O wonderful destroyers, ye are living forms of 
Nature! 

Laughing wind and dancing water. Under- 
neath, — the skulls of mortals. 



2 8 Poems 



THE SPIRIT IN THE SHELL 

^ I ''HERE Is a spirit in the sea-shore shell 

■^ And airily he sings; 
Sometimes you hear him faint as wind-blown 

bell 
Within a dell, 
Sometimes a strident din abroad he flings. 

He laughs in glee and taps with tiny hands 

Upon his polished wall; 

You almost hear the rhythmic cadence of the 

sands 
When great waves fall; 
You almost hear the rustle of the foam 
What time you hear his querulous crying in 

his home. 

A boisterous mirth is his on windy days — 

A drunken craze — 

You hear him beating on his prison door 

Rejoicing in his strength, and, more and more 

Making his hollow cell reverberate 

Intermlnate. 



Paid Martett 1^ 



But, when the strand is still beneath the 
moon, 

You hear his croon, 

His endless lullaby 
Of time, of change, of things that swift pass 

.by, 
Of lips, of death, of things that never die — 
Mysterious rune! 



30 Poems 



THE FOAM FAIRY 

CRASH! and the snow-white spume piles 
high 
Against the Indifferent rock! 
Up, up, the sparkling spindrifts fly 
Skyward with the shock! 
And, out above the ugly, shadowed stone, 
Instant, sudden, wralth-like as the dim 
New moon, there shapes a fairy form 
For but a fleeting moment of Time's flight; 
Ephemeral as Is the whir of wings 
The fleet foam brings 
A nymph's fair body Into light, 
Her hair adrift, her blue eyes sure and warm, 
Green clad and grey, with long arms bare 

and slim — 
Down plash the sodden drops! The vision 
fair is gone I 



Paid Mariett 31 



BOSTON 
\^As Seen From Harvard Bridge^ 

I 
Dawn 

"^TOW softly the heavy-stealing fog rolls off 

^ ^ the city's banks, 

Higher and higher it crawls above the long, 

low, level river, 
Turbidly, sinuously, clothing bridge, building, 

and city-flanks. 
All night long it has lain here — almost it 

seemed forever. 
Now with the dawn, the mist, afraid of the 

coming sun, 
Loosens its lover's embrace, rolls up and dis- 
solves in a sky 
Rosy and warm and pregnant with promise of 

day begun; 
And last comes the light itself — till the gold 

dome sparkles on high. 



32 Poems 



Great gold dome, saluting the dawn, and dom- 
inating the town, 

Symbol of that ideal toward which man yearns, 
aspires and strives. 

Below you the paltry struggle goes on (in mal- 
ice and hate) for renown. 

Yet, as a seal and sign of hope — O, stand and 
lift up our lives 1 



II 

Noon 

Over the neutral dun of the dancing Charles 

the sparklets play — 
Desperate diamonds of hurry and flight, but 

born to be snatched away. 
Your dancing is bounded on either bank by the 

park-ways, swept and clear. 
Stretching smoothly away, away, till almost a 

mile in the rear. 
The great arched bridge with the four stone 

feet, squats in the water and lowers. 
In and out in an orderly rout, its ways are 

thronged with men; 



Paul Marie tt 33 



Boston is ceaselessly busy, flags flutter on sky- 
ing towers; 

Frequent steeples rush up the sky — and over 
all the Dome again! 

Under that glowing bowl the city trembles and 

glows, 
The noon-day sun looks hotly down on a city 

without repose, 
A city burdened with wealth; there ceaseless 

the gold tides flow. 
But the heart of the city — Ah, who shall say? 

Is it clean, is it great or no? 



Ill 

Evening 

The sun has been an hour behind grey Corey 

Hill, 
And from the sunset sky there falls a dove-grey 

mist; 
And ever 
The air and water turn to silence save where, 

ripple-kissed. 



34 Poems 

The long line of embankment whispers, laughs 

and talks. 
And now the mist extends its tenuous arms and 

covers land and river 
With tender amethyst. 
The distant bridge, the shapeless town, the 

nearby walks, 
Fade into curious blues 
Of myriad hues; 

And bank and sky and house and distant dwell- 
ings- 
All changed to looming shapes and formless 

swellings — 
Are like a nocturne done in brown and blue. 
More delicate than Whistler's brush could 

do- 
Laden with heavy lotos and the weight of dank 

despair 
This all enshrouding blue . . . coils there. 

Everywhere 
Suddenly spring into being the joyous lights, 
Stringing their strands of jewels thro' the air. 
In white and yellow flights. 
The deepened blueness now is decked with gold. 
The gleaming town stares mist-bound at the 

sky. 
Only the dome swings free, picked out in fire. 



Paid Mariett 35 



O, steadfast and changeless symbol untouched 
by the new or the old, 

Even in mist and dark to you hearts still may 
aspire — 

Where picked out in golden fire, your unfet- 
tered dome swings high. 



3^ Poem, 



FROM A GARDEN 

A H, sweet is the wind in sun and shower, 
And soft is the sward in the Summer 
shade, 
And sweet is the sleepy, sun-drenched hour 
When noon in the cloudlets the breeze has laid, 
And sweet is the pleached garden's flower 
Overspread by the shadow of leaflets frayed; 
But what is there blowing in blossoming bower 
One half as sweet as yourself, dear maid? 



Paul Mariett 37 



LYRIC 

T OVE me for the spirit that is in me, 
^^ Not for my face; 
Love me for the lovely thoughts I shelter, 
Not for my grace. 

Love me for the love of thee within me. 
The rest is fleet; 

Love me for the hidden link that binds us,- 
And yet complete. 

Love me for the half of thee within me, 
Mere beauty flies; 

Love me now, and love me, Love, forever ;- 
The body dies. 



38 Poems 



TRIBUTE 

TN you the sum and substance of the past — 
^ In you unnumbered women stir and speak. 
In you vague, brooding shadow-shapings seek 
To guide your hesitant footsteps sure and fast. 
In you are all the women-souls that passed 
Unknown or noted through the ages. Greek, 
Perhaps, the lovely color of your cheek; 
The treasure of your hair in Rome amassed; 
A Gallic grey the lustre of your eyes; 
Perhaps Boadicea had that grace — 
And all of you an Eve in Paradise ! 
You are the cosmos-child — her sufferance, 
Moulded and shaped in plastic ignorance 
Toward the perfection of a future race. 



Paul Mariett 39 



AFTERMATH 

T T 7ELL, It was only a rose, after all, 
^^ And the wind has pillaged its stalk; 
Though I thought as I saw it through the wall, 
In the glimpse of my daily walk, 
That a thing so fair, so perfect there, 
Would be deathless. 

Well, it was only a woman's face, 
And the years have taken their toll, 
Though I thought as I saw it beyond my pace, 
In the silent desire of my soul, 
That a thing so rare, so perfect there. 
Would be deathless. 



40 Poems 



THE BRIDGE BUILDERS 

^T^HEY cluster there, those dots against the 
^ sky; 

So small and fragile on the ordered beams; 

The hammers shout, a red-hot rivet gleams. 
The bridge obeys, and grows beneath the eye. 

They cluster here, these dots upon the sod, 
So small and fragile on the ordered frame: 
Though trite their parts, and transitory, 
fame. 
The bridge obeys, and grows from man to 
God! 



Paul Mariett 41 



NOON-WHISTLES 



T IKE the plumed helms of a stern array 
^^^ When the battle is well begun, 

The streaming banners of snowy steam 
Flare suddenly in the sun. 



And a blare of raucous, discordant notes — 

A brilliant cacophony — 
Unites in a glorious major chord. 

Triumphant, City, for Thee ! 



42 Poems 



APRIL 

"XXTARMTH and rain, warmth and rain, 
^ ^ Warmth and rain on the earth again. 

The sordid earth, 

The place of birth, 
The place of birth of the grain. 
Washed by the gentle rain from the sky. 
The buds will crack, their cases dry. 
The crocus show his purple eye, 
To edge the emerald lane. 

April, April! 

But hark! 
No music now hath Nature for our ears 
But patter, patter, dropping, falling shower; 
But smiles she hath, yes, smiles amid her 

tears — 
The sun looks out, twixt dripping clouds that 

lower. 
And smiles the more — and gone are all our 

fears 
Old Winter's fled, and gone are all our fears. 
Red roofs glisten, 
There's a mist on 



Paul Mariett 43 



Every tree, and bush, and thicket, 
Golden walk, and garden wicket. 

Here a patter. 

There a patter. 
Laggard rain drops dropping after 
Clouds have passed. The bluer spaces 
Widen now. Like duchess laces, 
Little feathery streamers cross them, 
Woven gracefully across them. 
From the South the birds come winging 
Southern Summer with them bringing 
I, in my heart, am with them singing 

April, April! 



44 Poems 



JUNE 

^T^HE meadow, swollen with rank up-burst 

^ of grasses, 

Lies level to the light of the golden sun; 
Delicate dreams of daisies, one by one. 
Droop and rebound, as o'er their petals passes 
The stir of the morning breeze. In rosy 

masses. 
Like balls of billowing smoke, the apple trees 
Against the wall, are over-ripe for bees; 
And single blossoms, cupped like hands of 

lasses. 
Scatter and litter the ground at the touch of the 

wind. 
Sun's up! 'Tis June! And yesterday it 

rained. . . . 
Dust's pearl and precious, heaven's grandly 

stained 
With azure. Here discern the open mien 
Of Nature, and infrequent, baffling gained, 
The spirit underneath it — ^just half-seen! 



Paul Marten 45 



A DIAMOND DAY 

T?RAGILELY-sheathed, iridescent-embossed, 
^ In sparkle of crystal-silvery frost, 
A frozen forest dazzlingly tossed 
To a faint, soft azure sky. 

Nothing there is without its ice. 
Boles have bucklers of strange device, 
Twigs twinkle their needles. Nice 
The curious craft of the frost. 

Tangled boughs break, tinkle, and cry, 
Creak, squeak, rattle, brittle and dry. 
Small gold sun stalks up the sky; 
Trees stand still in the light. 

Thin little wind pipes down the way. 

Brown branches, slim branches, gnarled 

branches sway, 
Rustle and rustle and rustle alway — 
Shatter to prismatic light! 



46 Poems 



FALLING LEAVES 

"jTAINT fragments of forgotten melodies 

Flashed from the fiery fingers of the Bard 
Before time was, before the heavens were 

starred, 
Before earth framed her straining agonies; 
The warp and woof of mighty tapestries 
Strewed for an unimagined footprint's tread, 
A carpet golden, auburn, yellow, red, 
Shimmering and sheeny in the swirling breeze; 

This is the fall of the leaves in Autumn time: 
Each leaf a note of that old harmony 
Which shivers the age's taciturnity: 
Each leaf a thread in that prodigious weave. 
Worked on the web of Summer's sunny prime, 
And which naught but the Weaver shall con- 
ceive. 



Paul Mariett 47 



CAT-TAILS 

/^AT-TAILS nodding brightly in the after- 

^^ noon sunshine 

Along a dun and dreary, blue-black ditch; 

Soft, cylindrical, and brown, and fluffy-headed, 

Green-leaved, and silver-scattered: 

Some quite new, and some wind-battered. 

Growing straightly, growing greatly, 

On the summit and upon the banks steep pitch; 

The lower almost bedded 

In the brine. 

Around, about, in, out, 
Go darting busy, nervous dragon-flies. 
Blue and golden. 
Flying swift, but half-beholden 
Red and grey and green — translucent dyes, 
Sometimes resting, sometimes questing; 
But ever, ever haunting the flaunting 
Cat-tails by the brine; — 

Cat-tails nodding brightly in the afternoon sun- 
shine. 



48 Poems 



DEAD LEAVES 

T^O you hear them lightly rushing, pushing, 

^"^ crowding, striving, fluttering. 

Filling air and lawn and roadway with their 

intermatching, intermating. 
One by one, and ten by ten, and thousands by 

their thousands, 
In rank and file and cohort, or in mob and rout 

and riot? 

Mighty Autumn, mighty Autumn is the Quick- 

ener and Destroyer; 
And the leaves that voice the voiceless earth 

are whispering, muttering. 
For the leaves from earth to earth have come, 

from earth to earth are going — 
Lying on the shadeless alleys, crowding on the 

muffled roadway. 

When you tread them scattered thinly, or 
plough through them, ankle-pushing. 

While they talk and laugh and chatter, sigh and 
sob, expostulating, 



Paul Mariett 49 



Know that these are various voices of the dead 

that earth embraces : 
Faint and fragile as the leaves are, so the dear 

forgotten voices. 



50 Poems 



A RAINY SUNSET 

A THWART the silvered rain the sunset 
gleams 
Gaudy and golden through the filing rain; 
And, built across the heaven, a rosy lane, — 
Where wandering hellish fire incessant teems — 
Still blushes for the kiss of the dead sunbeams. 
Beneath, the muffled lineaments of the hills 
With rounded depths, a shifting silver fills — 
The shifting silver of departed dreams — 
Are wet and black and far and as unreal 
As if this were a shadow world, and they, 
The mythic mountains of a former day. 
Still in the stealing silence rings the rain, 
The tears of Earth which weeps a bitter pain, 
A bitter pain no glowing sky can heal. 



Paul Marie tt 51 



VILLANELLE OF A NORTHERN LIGHT 

T N the cold beauty of the waning moon, 
^ Low over level fields of shining snow, 
I hear the memory of an Iceland rune, 

Sung in the elder days — a stately tune 
Wherein the red and bearded vikings go 
In the cold beauty of the waning moon. 

Hush! Far and fragile, tiny as a croon. 
Beatings of subtle elfin footsteps? No, 
I hear the memory of an Iceland rune. 

'Tis Wodin's heavy tread, or Freya's shoon. 
Or mighty Thor who strikes a hammer-blow, 
In the cold beauty of the waning moon? 

No. O'er the blue and glassy-smooth lagoon 
There is a winding music falling slow : 
I hear the memory of an Iceland rune. 

For jealous Time withholds the final boon; 
So, when the level field is glowing low 
In the cold beauty of the waning moon, 
I hear the memory of an Iceland rune. 



52 Poems 



T 



A NIGHT-IMPRESSION 

HE moon burns in a silver mist 

Like a rotting tree-trunk phosphor- 
kissed, 
Looms and burns in the heavy air — 
Low-hung and swaying there 
Where the grey mist spells Despair. 

Half of the wan road has the moon; 

The other half is a blind lagoon. 

Bright, wan line where the moonshine lags 
The road climbs out o'er its upper crags, 
Where sultry vapor loiters, drags. 

The sodden meadow, grey and dank, 

Rolls up sheer to the drumhn flank: 
Against the moon I plainly see 
Tortured cedars, one, two, three; 
One, two three, and one, two, three. 

Nether dark has no such night 

As this grey, morbid, stealing light. 
Life burns low in this listless air. 
Heavy with carking, eating Despair; 
Despair! the grey moon mocks — 'Despair!* 



Paul Mariett 53 



LIFE 

T7OOT by foot up a shrouded stair, 
^ Wearily and crying, 
Toiling and sighing, 
Beating of breasts and tearing of hair- 
Foot by foot up a shrouded stair. 

League on league down a gilded way. 

Carelessly chaffing, 

Shallowly laughing. 
Revel and joyaunce and beautiful clay,- 
League on league down a gilded way. 



54 Poems 



DESOLATION 

'' I ^HE cold wind blows in the apple tree, 

■*" Where Autumn's fruit was fair to see 
There is no thing to comfort me. 

The grass has vanished under snow. 
It must be cold and chill below. 
It would be cold to me I know. 

The cold sleet beats against the pane. 
The sky is full of bitter rain. 
It is less bitter than my pain. 

I pray you, chilly winds that blow, 
I pray you, bitter flakes of snow, 
I pray you tell me, if you know, 

Where did my wandering lover go? . . . 

I would that he were here again. . . . 

I think that he would pity me. . . , 



Paid Mariett 55 



LIFE-WEARY 

VT^HAT If I say to the new born, 
^ ^ *^Glory on earth; in heaven be peace," 
Since angels have lost, this painful morn. 

One of their choir by birth's decrease? 
Why, if I sing that, I shall say : 
''Earth is a vale of tears!" 

What if I say to the new dead, 

''Glory in heaven, on earth be peace," 

Since angels have gained, this painless morn, 
One of their choir by death's increase? 

Why, if I sing that, I shall say, 
"Heaven is a height of tears!" 

O for a lifeless world to lie in ! 

Not to be born in, not to die in . . • 

'Tis all I want of thee. 

O, Power, grant it to me ! 



S6 Poems 



AFTER BATTLE 

HAIL ! How thou comest in pride from the 
battle! 
Crowned with the glorious chaplet of zeal. 
Arms and the chariot how well they become 

thee, 
Buckler and corslet and helmet and steel ! 

See ! thou art pale ! Is it anger resurgent? 
Righteous is wrath 'gainst a cowardly foe. 
Mighty thine arms! Are they lax? — They are 

wearied, 
Wearied with hewing and bending the bow. 

See, here is blood! Here is blood of the foe- 
men. 

No. It is thine! Thou hast struggled and 
slain. 

Awful thy wounds — but wounds are a glory, 

And blood is the sign of a glorious pain. 

Wilt thou not speak? See, I bend me before 

thee ; 
I, thy true wife, I bend, I beseech. 



Paul Mariett '57 



Grant'st me no word then? Ay, that becomes 

thee. 
Death hath no speech. Nay. Death hath no 

speech. 



58 Poems 

A HYMN AFTER THE GREEK 
lln Choriambics^ 

QURF and smoke of the surf, emerald bright, 

^^ green and the froth of foam; 

Cliffs in towering shafts, purple and mauve, 

crimson and grey and black; 
Ruby, faintly maroon sands, and the blown dust 

of the land and loam 
Pounded, crushed in the mill, beaten and flung 

out from the rock — and back: 

Upward, high on the cliffs cloven by wind, rain 

and the hand of heat: 
Fleeced w^ith grass of an hue exquisite, pale 

green with a hint of blue; 
Sprinkled thickly with gems, flowers of gold, 

couch for a queen most meet; 
Yea, if you will see, here is She laid, Love and 

her lovers, too ! 



Paid Mariett 59 



I 



VOICELESS 



S there a painter to picture the moonlight? 
Is there a singer to compass the sea? 
Is there a poet can tell of the starlight? 

Then how can I tell of my longing for thee? 



6o Poems 



REMEMBRANCE 
{^From the Spanish of G. A. Becquer^ 

'VT'OUR eyes are blue, and when you smile, 

■■■ Their perfect clarity recalls to me 
The tremulous gleam of rosy morning, while 
It coloreth the sea. 

Your eyes are blue, and when you weep, 

With transient, crystal tears the blue is wet; 

Like drops of dew that in the dawning sleep 
Upon a violet. 



Your eyes are blue, and when I gaze 
Therein where soul and spirit hidden 

It seems I see the solitary blaze 
That points the evening star ! 



are, 



Paid Marie tt 6i 



THE MARQUIS OF MALPICA 

\_From the Spanish^ 

TITTHENE'ER the Marquis of Malpica, 
^^ The Holder of the Royal Key, 
To questions asked, replies with silence, — 
He says his all, unwittingly. 



62 Poems 



COMING HOME FROM THE PLAY 

[Midnight] 

^\TOV leave the yellower splotch of light 
-*- That marks the city's nightly fete, 

And turn into your quiet street 
That stretches dim and straight. 

Monotonously, block on block, 
A wall of homes on either hand. 

In ordered way, at every street, 
The blue electrics stand. 

Your grotesque shadow goes before, 
Or limply trails along behind. 

And threatens you with goblin arms, 
Or flees you like the wind. 

And, huddled there, beneath the light, 
Against the arching, iron post, 

A woman, sere and thin and sharp, 
Not twenty at the most. 



Paul Mariett 63 



Like a live thing, a tiny wind 

Snaps at her cheap and tawdry clothes 
High on its mast, aloofly pure, 

The steady radiance glows. 

You pass her with averted face 
To try to miss her smiling leer, 
Avoid her low, suggestive voice, 
And what you would not hear. 

You mount your worn, familiar steps, 
And enter soft the dim-lit hall. 
And shut the world outside the door, 
And wonder at it all. . . . 



64 Poems 



ANTIQUITAS AUROSA 

TN Greece of old, they led a different life. 
^ {This from my thoughts) There was a 

fair abode — 
The course of life was one long, golden road; 
Afar were sordid, ugly, futile strife, 
Like that with which our modern time is rife : 
But singing, joying, loving — all in mirth. 
One watched old beauty or new beauty's birth — 
Beauty and Being, wedded man and wife. 

Not so : though now we see naught but the gold, 
[And this from my thoughts) there was the 

grey, to fold 
And flaunt its sordid rags about, as well; 
Beneath, the usual crusted human mold; — 
Did one man dine on meat and muscatel 
Another starved. Did this one rise, this fell. 



Paul Mariett 65 



EXOTIC 

TTAIR not gold, but dross of gold made 
-■^ bright ; 

Eyes not brown, but tawny as the sands; 
Small cool mouth that sparkles with a light 
Laughter. Little sun-kissed feet and hands. 

This is she who takes the heart of man; 
Takes it in her cruel hands, a trust — 
Pledge concluded where a love began — 
Gives it back as blackened ash and dust. 

This is she who tricks and smiles, and blows 
Kisses with light lips no death forgets; 
This is she who plays with love and knows 
Nothing of the pain which love begets. 

Is there no sentience of full tragedy, 
No sorrow in your heart, no little trace 
Of this great helpless sorrow you set free 
In seal or sign of penitence on your face, 



66 Poems 



Judith? or any sweetness in your ways; 
Any warm swelling in your perfect breast; 
Any warm softness in your haughty gaze? 
Is it all mockery of my unrest? 

Hate! Can one hate this separated thing? 
Does it avail to hate the supple cat 
Because it struck and maimed you, proffering 
Friendship and food and haven? Yet, in that, 

Lies the hard answer. You would far away. 
Out where the sea is jewelled by the wind. 
Diamond with diamond matching, swim and 

play— ^ 
Or in green mirth of meadows pleasure find. 

Nature — you are a part of that great wheel, 
Judith. You torture, as She does, unseen, 
Inscrutable, and purposeful. You feel 
One with her, shrined in her aloof demesne. 

''I feel this tree a comrade, trusted friend." 
Or, '*How the day caresses favored me." 
Fool ! you are blasted by great cold. Forf end 
That Nature should so stoop to you, or see. 



Paid Mariett 67 



Such is Judith — altogether Hers. 
Judith has caught the subtle secrecy, 
Nature she knows to bend, herself averse 
From any kindly feeling, as is She, — 

Such is Judith. In the tidal-breast. 
Swelling along the beach, she hears a Voice. 
Deep in the faint grey forest she may rest. 
Rest and be comforted. She may rejoice. 

Shout with the splendor of the clarion dawn. 
Rock in the drowsy cradle of the noon. 
Sleep in the dusty glimmer of the spawn 
Of starry worlds, warmed by the gentle moon. 

Such is Judith . . . God! to swim and 

play. 
Laugh with the ripples of the shelving shore. 
Feel me a part of that great Vast, away 
From God and man, with her forevermore! 



68 Poems 



ALWAYS TO GROW 

Q PIRIT of all things changes and grows: 
^ Last year's canker is this year's rose, 
Next year's lily perhaps. None knows. 

That which was foul shall come to be clean: 
That which was hidden shall come to be seen 
Glory, nobility, deep in the mean. 

Life leaps up with the throb of the w^orld: 
Harder and harder its blows are hurled. 
Known ! Where the unknown lay, close-furled. 

Grant then, spirit, thy fearless grace: 
Toward the future set my face — 
Shall I be halt in so glorious a race? 



Paid Mariett 69 



NOT LETHE 

T3UBBLES in Circe's wine; 

^^ Froth of a cup of poppy; 

The taste of the lips of a Lotos-eater; 

The friendly feel of an icy death in voluptuous 

snow; 
The utter languor of a Summer noon; 
You! 
Aye ; but not Lethe ! 



70 Poems 



ACROSTIC SONNET TO COLORS AND 
CAROLINE 

/^URIOUS It IS to find, these latter days, 
^^ A soul indignant at the world's dull eyes ; 
Red is the fervent Bible which she buys, 
O such a red ! and all she owns one blaze — 
Long-satisfying colors that should raise 
(If they were courteous) felicitous cries — 
Not a phantasma of cacophonies — 
Even a harmonious match of blended praise. 

Do you be gracious, colors, let us see 
Upon all fabrics, textures she employs 
Deep-lustred tones of yours that man enjoys: 
Let you be flawless, her results will prove; 
Endanger nothing, though her work be free — 
You must be moved, and first of all must move I 



Paul Mariett 71 



DEPARTURE FROM PORT 

"a LL clear before us?" saith the master, 
-^^ ''AH clear!" the pilot saith. 

''Aye, save death!" 

Mused the master. 



72 Poems 



CREPUSCULE 

TXT HAT joy, against the dim, grey window- 
^^ pane, 

Beyond which lies the dim, grey dying west. 
To see again my mother sit at rest, 
Pale with a pallor no warm sun could stain. 
Fighting the anguish that for years had lain 
Grim and unconquered in her woman-breast; 
To hear her brave voice by no pain distressed; 
To know her all material flesh again: 

For thus she sat at eve when light was frail 
Without, no light or sound within the room ; 
Slim, fragile, tender, by her pain made pale, 
Ah, could I reach her, groping through the 

gloom. 
Kneel at her feet and lay my worn head there 
And feel her comforting fingers on my hair. 



Paid Mariett 73 



THE GRATEFUL DEAD 

^TT^HE grateful dead, they say, He snug and 

^ close 
Under the smooth, soft sloping of the grass. 
Grateful indeed because above them pass 
No other steps than those of wind or bird — 
No other sound is heard. 

For without eyes we see, and earless, hear; 
Sweeter is this than nights of restless mood. 
Sweeter than nights of blank infinitude. 
Sweeter than ghostly pageants of a dream, 
Half-caught, of things that seem. 

Another life 'have we than those who live. 
Another death have we than those who die. 
Mortal, and ghost and angel pass us by — 
Mortal and ghost and angel have one breath — 
Die, would ye learn of death. 



74 Poems 



EX CARTHAGINE 

Loquitur guhernator: 

Q O I turn the helm and the hull slides clear, 

^ {Now leave the rest to me) 

For spattered out of the din I hear 

The sound of the sea, the sudden sea 

That lives and laughs to leap at me, 

And holds my vessel dear; 

{So rest ye easy here) 

For I know the way to steer. 

For I guide my ship to sea. 

Cast away! 

We are sailing to-day 

Beyond the blue borders of the bay! 

The last rope plashes; the ship heels; 

The lush green ripples quarrel 

At the stem, where the plaited laurel 

Decks the divinity ; 

And the whole lithe vessel feels 

The lure of the outer sea. 



Paul Mariett 75 



So I notch the prow on the sinking sun 

At the edge of the endless sea, 

(Now leave the rest to me) 

For play's done, toil's begun — 

Let women weep, we weep no more, 

Our eyes are bright for the distant shore, 

{Yet rest ye easy here) 

For I know the way to steer 

Thro' the paths of the pathless sea. 



Cantant nautce: 

Below in the hold, for gold untold, 
Are piled the bales of our future sales, 
Bronze and tin and iron therein, 
Ivory thin, and the gloss of skin, 
Chamois fine, and the glint of wine 
Quenched in jars of a new design — 

Bales, bales in the hold below! 
Viands meet for a king to eat, 
Chryselphantine his jewelled seat. 
Or, if he care to anoint his hair. 
Here's Phrygian oil that the makers swear 
Smells riotously of the parsley bed. 
Or of roses red when their heads are 
shed — 

Bales, bales in the hold below ! 



76 Poems 

Rare old woods whence a smell exudes 
For perfuming women's chattels and goods; 
Shields and glaives that a barbaros craves, 
Swords and knives for the taking of lives, 
Weapons chased and goblets traced. 
Pattern with pattern interlaced — 

Bales, bales in the hold below! 
Amber yellow and onyx mellow; 
Ruby, emerald, amethyst. 
Diamond glyptics — or a twist 
Of pale pink pearls in a bracelet, 
An amulet, or a carcanet. 
Or, richer still, in an armlet set — 

Bales, bales in the hold below! 
But best of all for the glance to fall 
Is there, in a coign by the timber-wall — 

There's a treasure worthy a man's desire. 
The lust of the buyer, the skill of the dyer, 
Lucent and fraught with carnelian fire. 
In tunic and mantle, the murex-mire, 
The perfect purple, the purple of Tyre — 
Bales, bales in the hold below! 

Loquitur gubernator: 

So I turn the helm to the western blaze of the 
sun, 



Paul Mariett 77 



Aye, even so, till the crimson haze of the 

sail 
And the crimson round of that sinking fire 

are one. 
On, on! proud-hearted lords! Aspire! 

Prevail ! 



78 Paul Marie tt 



IN REMEMBRANCE 

TT is hard and painful to speak of those lately 
■*' dead; it is harder still to set down for the 
world which knew them scarcely, or not at all, 
a record of the few obvious experiences called 
their life, and the personal impressions of their 
demeanor and conduct, termed their character. 
How much more difficult such an annotation to 
their achievements becomes, when the work of 
the deceased must represent his first and last 
appearance before the general public, the in- 
troduction and farewell! 

The simple details of his life cannot be of 
absorbing interest to the world at large; nor 
is his character wholly explicable to one who 
saw only the last phase of it. As for his many 
friends, they feel they knew him, but they can- 
not speak. Death ties the tongue of intimacy, 
and delicacy forbids the utilization of too per- 
sonal data. It is as if one exposed love-letters. 
Numerous as were Paul's friendships, they 
seemed peculiarly inviolable. His letters were 
among his best writings; pungent, terse, idio- 
matic, full of caustic wit and affectionate rail- 



Paul Mariett 79 



lery and incisive criticism, they constitute the 
clearest image of him to his intimate corre- 
spondents. The circle of his friends was re- 
markable for the breadth and variety of their 
interests, and Paul was equally at ease were the 
intercourse born of art, music, philosophy, sci- 
ence, athletic sports, or the more elemental hu- 
man relations. 

It is the genial and considerate host, the 
ready listener and outspoken critic, who is re- 
membered oftener than the other, — still the 
same Paul, but in the clutch of unbearable, 
immitigable torments, lying helpless in drug- 
induced coma, or fighting up to the surface of 
consciousness from the depths. After a strug- 
gle of over a year and a half, the horror and 
pain of which no mind in health can grasp, the 
terrible disease, tumor of the spine, had its way. 
During that period he displayed extraordinary 
powers of endurance. The indefatigable crea- 
tive energy which had sustained him through 
years of health did not subside until the end. 
Before his fatal illness he had read omnivor- 
ously, produced voluminously short-stories, 
poems, plays, critical articles and even the por- 
tion of a novel, and musical compositions of 
considerable power. It was a frequent occur- 



8o In Remembrance 

rence for him to write through the greater part 
of the night, until the early morning hours. 
While confined at the Infirmary of the Cam- 
bridge Hospital, he wrote (at who knows what 
expense of body and spirit!) some of his best 
poems, and criticisms; and six months later, 
long after hope had been abandoned by med- 
ical opinion, he composed an acrostic in sonnet 
form, of a brilliance and artistic ingenuity truly 
astounding. Even in the last months of his 
sickness, his mind was filled with literary and 
musical projects. He was tormented by themes 
that played through his head, demanding tran- 
scription. For a while he tried a sort of short- 
hand method of notation in an endeavor to 
lessen the fatigue of writing notes, but the men- 
tal effort proved exhausting, and he was com- 
pelled to relinquish his attempts. Everything 
had to yield to the exigence of his condition. 
Books, the usual recourse from painful inertia 
or ennui, lasted longer; but these also had to 
be withdrawn, as his little remaining strength 
was required to oppose the ceaseless onslaughts 
of suffering. And he read with such swift, com- 
prehensive avidity that reading aloud by others 
was unendurable. His nerves suffered exquisite 
refinement A careless step, a discordant voice, 



Paul Mariett 8r 



or a touch on the skin were as shocks from live 
wires, and every emanation from those about 
him seemed to carry with it powers of life and 
death. 

He who had delighted in all legitimate pleas- 
ures of the senses, in bodily and gustatory 
vigor, beauty of sound, color, odors, and tactile 
impressions, experienced their perverted and 
destructive states more and more keenly as his 
powers of resistance waned. His delectations 
became an inquisition that condemned without 
defence and tortured without mercy. His phil- 
osophy of life, moreover, was too ruthless and 
unflinching to serve as buoyancy in hours of de- 
pression that verged on despair. His religious 
faith had grown steadily away from orthodoxy 
into something that appeared neither to com- 
fort spiritually nor wholly to satisfy intellec- 
tually. He seems to have left life before dis- 
covering adequate compensation for its forbid- 
ding aspects, — shadows, it may be said, into 
which his eyes saw quite clearly. He was not 
romantic and had no illusions, in the usual 
sense. 

It was sheer strength of will and a physique 
too tenacious to be easily destroyed that sus- 
tained him throughout. Who will forget the 



82 In Rememhrayice 

quick level look as one entered the sick-room, 
the powerful grip of the emaciated hand, the 
conversation casual as if the intruder were not 
always waiting just without? His activities 
other than intellectual had been strenuous; a 
speedy boxer, who could give and take punish- 
ment, fond of skiing, toboganning, camping, 
riding and sailing. No poet has ever expressed 
the fine rhythms of action more intensely, at the 
same time with such appreciation of their aes- 
thetic values. No poetry is more masculine, 
more replete with healthful verve and resilient 
elan. It is this sense of a capacity for action 
that gives vitality not only to his dramatic 
pieces, but even to the poems of dehcate de- 
scription and contemplation. They are terse, 
sinewy and animate with that movement whose 
abounding pulsation he felt within himself. He 
noted them in language of precise discrimina- 
tion, and with a realization of balance and 
reserve that guided a natural exuberance 
to the Hellenic quahty of simple, appropriate 
form. 

If, during health, one could divine by the 
easy, graceful, assured carriage of Paul's well- 
built figure his athletic interests, there was de- 
termination to match, perceptible in the strong, 



Paul Mariett 83 



resolute head, the militant chin that terminated 
the lean, firmly modelled face, the thin, sensi- 
tive, tightly-drawn lips whose smile was often 
a little grim rather than merely amiable. The 
dark eyebrows slanting acutely toward a point 
of contingency above the strongly-ridged nose, 
aided the mobility of his face in its modula- 
tions, lending an air now of quizzical diablerie, 
or ironical directness, or inscrutable, penetrat- 
ing intentness, or again of mild, humorous 
friendliness; and they served as fitting base to 
the open, thoughtful forehead that curved up 
proudly to meet the crest of black hair, waving 
not too riotously. 

But it was the eyes that marked him among 
his fellows as critic and poet. Sometimes 
keenly practical and absorbed in the things im- 
mediately before him, they could be, and were, 
habitually dreamy, distantly contemplative. He 
was widely respected for the soundness of his 
judgment, for he perceived, occasionally with 
some prejudice, but oftener with great intuitive 
justice of insight, the relations of life and of 
art. He was not deceived by appearances. He 
hated pretentiousness, sententious morahzing, 
academic arrogance and crass stupidity, and if 
his criticisms (they were not judgments) ap- 



84 In Remembrance 

peared severe even to acridness at times, it was 
because he refused to be conciliated or wheedled 
into compromise. He felt with almost bitter 
keenness the cleft between his own and the pre- 
ceding generation, the destruction of traditional 
beliefs and usages, the advent of new, more un- 
hampered and more exacting criterions of con- 
duct. That he was thoroughly in sympathy 
with the humanitarian movement of to-day is 
evident in that splendid warning and prophecy, 
The Two Feasts. His work, when occasion de- 
mands, is bold and frank, chastened, however, 
by his omnipresent respect for form and fitting 
beauty. Yet with a mind progressive and fer- 
tile for the future, he respected all sincerity, 
though it might seem outworn. He had noth- 
ing of the heedless cruelty of insurgent youth, 
nor was he a blatant propagandist. He real- 
ized the pathos of creative evolution and the 
poem. In the Temple of Azzi-Rep, utters the 
sadness of deposed gods and deserted temples. 
To hold one's place in the ungovernable swirl 
of new ideas and experiences is difficult. Na- 
ture is a merciless opponent. 

**Harder and harder the blows are hurled 
Known, where the unknown lay, close furled." 



Paid Mariett 85 



^^Shall I be halt in so glorious a race?" he 
cries. 

He possessed that rare virtue, scrupulous in- 
tegrity of thought. He subjected all experi- 
ences and impressions, were it a symphony or a 
number of The Harvard Monthly^ to search- 
ing analysis, extracting with triumphant pre- 
cision the fallacies or felicities therein impli- 
cated. Yet he also knew the secret of building 
complexly from the simplest elements, and his 
best lyrics and short stories witness that power. 
He had, indeed, the impulse and energy for 
labor, *'the infinite capacity for taking pains"; 
but he had for complement the plenary wisdom 
of genius that sits in judgment on its deeds, 
mindful of its limitations and foreseeing its 
ends. But whatever efficiency experts declare, 
no scrupulousness, however imperative, no toil, 
however prolonged, not even the most deter- 
mined will can create greatly without perfec- 
tion of the instrument, without inherent sources 
of inspiration. 

Underneath a personality somewhat austere, 
in a New England way, there was something 
warm, bright, vivid and flaming, come down to 
him from his French Canadian ancestry, per- 
haps. His character was witness to that Mar- 



86 In Remembrance 

riage of Heaven and Hell, of which Blake 
speaks, the union of passion and intellect, 
power and reflection, delight in experience and 
control of experience, and as neither predom- 
inated he seemed to have no weakness to call 
vice. If he suffered from the green morbidity 
of his age, it was well concealed. That par- 
donable causticity was as the bracing tang of 
those hills (the Berkshires, for which he had a 
profound love), and whose *^humble eremite'' 
he was, on many expeditions. He craved color, 
particularly scarlet; but an artist's appreciation 
of the pictorial led him to fix limits to profusion 
and saved him from the bizarre. One of his 
last interests was in the bindings of his books. 
The selection of proper colors and leathers was 
a real delight, and their return from the bindery 
an occasion for eulogizing. An aptitude for 
sound, color and mobile rhythms led him to 
constant experiments, curious, interesting, near- 
ly always successful and beautiful in effect. He 
accomplished feats unknown to the English lan- 
guage, and so has made permanent additions 
to our literature. 

Paul Mariett felt the enthusiasm of discov- 
ery. He felt that existence was unsparing. He 
endeavored to extract the intrinsic from the ac- 



Paul Marie tt 87 



cidental in love and beauty, in life and death. 
With all his joyous virility there runs through 
his work, almost from the beginning, an im- 
pending melancholy, that is neither the imma- 
ture cheerlessness of sceptical youth nor the un- 
realizable unreality of a dreamer, but some- 
thing unaccountably sinister, and premonitory, 
a quality that pervades his most powerful and 
poignant lyrics, flashing out finally, nakedly 
mystical, in the poem, The Grateful Dead. 
Concerning this side of his character, of which 
he spoke rarely, and that cursively, little is to 
be said, much to be left to the ^^eternal imag- 
ination." 

When every ordinary channel of interest had 
been closed to him, one by one, there remained 
primary affections supplying an almost ex- 
hausted stamina. He had to run the intermin- 
able gauntlet of the moments and endure a 
nightmare without explication. If he prayed 
for deliverance, he continued until the last to 
express hope, but with a kind of critical delib- 
eration, as if not urging too much of nature. 
His few remaining social interests seemed triv- 
ial, matters of food and the noting of the in- 
evitable course of the malady. At last *'the 
depths came to look into him" and his aspect 



88 In Remembrance 

was of gaunt, strained unearthllness, the pallid 
splendor of approaching death. Covered by 
flowers, later, all traces of the struggle had van- 
ished, and his face seemed pure marble, a mask 
of calm, imperturbable strength. 

George W. Cronyn 



Y 17 1913 



